The First Discord
by OneShotRevolt
Summary: A young maia looks out from Aman to see Melkor at work in Middle Earth. The start of his falling is in this moment - it will end in ages to come when he is known as the Lord of the Rings.
They had not seen what he had seen. They saw with eyes that already had fixed shapes, already knew precise ends, already dreamed in fullstops.

He had seen beauty.

The sky goes to gold and silver with the trees. And shadowy blue as Ossë and Ulmo brood over the waters. But no gold was as gold as his. No red so violent in ignition, and bruising purple turned to black and liquid light exploding up into billowing clouds caught up with ash.

He would linger on the path between work and rest, a hammer and chisel forgotten on the earth beside him. There he would watch single hands push ruts into the earth, forge pinnacle out of dust and dazzling white sharp snagged peaks that flavoured his breath with quivering excitement. He marvelled that any could continue their work, so thin and monotonous next to the extremes of that display.

He would trail late into the workshop, where unsaid chidings would linger about Aulë as a simmering irritation. He would look at the finesse of his work and see only incomplete imperfection. He wondered what songs urged the earth to bend into glaciers and the rocks into fire. His eyes would sit in the furnace of his labour, dulled and unlit, his mind thinking only of that beauty.

He feared it as much as the next did. He could feel it even from across the seas. Chaos. Just thinking of it made him shiver. It made him angry also. He was angered that the order was so well kept here, and left so unchecked there. He never spoke of it though. Once a fellow kinsman, close to him in work and thought, articulated that frustration.

"Whatever is the point in making such fine things to order when each morning we must look out and see such wanton destruction of the Music!? What is the point in striving when such chaos is so apparent!?"

"The whole is greater than that one note of discord, Curunír. Do not let the illusion of its grandeur set despair in you. We must all continue to work for the end that is for the best of all." Aulë, master of smiths, was always stalwart in words. His honesty came through clearest in that way. Mairon rarely shared words with him.

It is not just illusion though, is it? Were the words in Mairon's heart. Because though Curunír was for now contented, Mairon was never so quelled.

While fear and awe were held in equal measure, he never sought out the abominable beauty. He feared also what might be said if others saw that he alone of them harboured intrigue and not just resentment.

He was not ready to cross the water. He knew it and dreaded it within him. He knew he was somehow not complete, in a ways that his fellow workers were. He knew he must stay longer beneath the two trees and cast out whatever it was that he knew was not right. He walked to Aulë with the words prepared on his lips. The words not to go. The words to learn longer in the light of gold and silver.

"Will you come with us, Mairon, to shape the low hills and delve quiet places for Yavanna's creatures to rest and shelter?"

"I will."

And the great smith could not see the horror with which he revolted against himself and urged himself to learn longer of light.

In the place that is called Middle Earth, there are shadows where the trees cannot reach. It is a place of wild beauty, where order and disorder mix and meld. He at first leapt at the task, seeing so clearly his work before him. Bringing form and structure to shapeless or discarded matter. He did not let his mind linger on the discarded matter. He did not let himself think on what it might mean that so precious a thing could be idly left aside, incomplete and unadorned.

He worked in the shadow of precipices. They had to sing softly lest the snow be shook to movement. Aulë's booming voice had to subside, because too much of the earth rang with him, and threatened to pull the ice down upon those who helped him.

Mairon wondered at the idea of places where even the great smith had to stay silent. He wondered at the idea of songs that might bring such tragedy. But mostly he wondered at the beauty – the place where ice and fire met and subsisted. There was even a kind of order to it, he thought. The extremes in balance, each terrible to witness, with their violent abandon held to account by one another or stoked by one another. He kept his face down when he worked in the shadow of wonders.

The day he heard the music was the start of his undoing. It had no form and at first no sense. His fellow maiar would cover their ears and wince at one another. But in the strange dissonant tones and erratic rhythms he heard a story so explosive with passion that he hurt within. There were deep lamentations in the song, and shouts of fearless, peerless joy, and the turns and twists of a frustrated soul seeking, seeking in an abyss for something it could not find. The casting about of matter matched this dance and seemed not to be about creation or destruction but searching. Mairon kept the song close to him and broke open his thought trying to comprehend it. What does he seek? What could he possibly want that was not here? What did he need that he did not have? And though he could not fathom the answers to these questions, he ached to hear again that song and somehow to include it, set it to order in the world. Perhaps then others would see what he saw: the way that the ruined canvass left in the wake of such music was a deeper treasury to begin shaping than any blank slate Aulë could set up.

It was about including discord in the great work. Just as Aulë had said to Curunír.

He sung his first dissonance late at night to the fire at his anvil-side back in the Undying Lands. He coaxed it only very slightly, wondering if the flame might burn brighter, longer, hotter. The eruption of great mountains exploded thick flames vertical. The tornado of light smouldered the walls soot black before dying back to embers with the fading of the notes from his lips.

Thereafter he knew fear in the house of Aulë. He would only sing in the night when all had left, and each thing he tempered in the bright fire he would melt to nothing again before the morning broke.

His old melodies could not help but leap with the lean of his new stolen ones. The lyrical lilt of intervals that only come with practice littered the old sketches of Aulë's now lumbering anthems. They sounded as bulky boulders moved slowly by reluctant rivers, Mairon thought, they know nothing of fire, ice, and chaos. Chaos. That was not his word. He became afraid again and put aside his tools.

For a while he exiled himself from the smith's halls. He wandered long in the light of the trees and stood in the place where the silver of Telperion fuses with Laurelin's gold. There Yavanna came to him one day, and asked why he no longer came to her lover's hall to work precious metals and fine crafts. Mairon was silent and fearful of her. He spoke to her in half-truth.

"May I not walk in the light your beautiful handiwork instead?" He gestured to the trees, the pinnacle of all Yavanna had cultivated.

"You may, young maia, but I do not think your heart is inclined toward the plants of the earth. As was apparent when you were first made, your work is in fire and stone, uniting these mysteries of Ilúvatar and bringing forth from them new music."

"New music?" He laughed bitterly. And she frowned. Mairon was careful after this and kept his words under closer guard. The closer he guarded he words, the deeper the labyrinth he built his thoughts.

When he returned to Aulë, the great smith asked him no questions, as Mairon knew he would. He took up his hammer and sung the old songs exactly the way he had been taught. That night, when all had departed, he raised his voice to the sound of volcanoes and set the very halls of the forge shaking as his sung to the fire. For the first time, he realised that the flames were not just mighty, but that their every curve and flicker bent to the timbre of his voice. Control. Perfect control in a way that was so absent from his daily labours. He held the fire with only his will, forcing each tongue to a precise height and heat. It buckled beneath his attention, but he seized it firm with the collision of his song. That night he made a ring. He did not adorn it and made it only of iron mixed with bronze, so that none would look twice at it, or wonder the more precious metals became depleted. When he held it in his hand, he could think only of the way that the very flames themselves had submitted to him. He smiled and placed the secret on his finger.

It was a crime to keep such things from day to day work. He wondered how long the valar had hidden from their hardworking counterparts that it was within their power to control the substances they shaped with so much ease. Countless days might be saved and energy conserved. The tasks before them could be done quicker and, with the right application, maintain the precise same amount of beauty. Every etching would still be intact, every jewel set, every adornment accounted for. Everything would be exactly as it had been, but faster, and more efficiently.

He of course said nothing. But long fires stewed slow embers inside him at all times. He was lethargic in his goodwill and sardonic in his silence. His inner secret and knowledge of truth set his arching brows high above others. His fellow maiar learned not to speak with him, lest they bring down the casual whip of his scorn.

Aulë came to him on the last day of summer and spoke with him. Mairon knew that the smith had little desire to converse with him and suspected the vigilant Yavanna behind the entreaty. He kept frustration in his heart then along with jealousy. Though he looked down on those who did not know secrets as he did, he yearned all the same for recognition. It hurt him that even the great smith could not see the clear mastery Mairon now had over his work.

"Mairon, child." And the endearment seemed an insult, "Will you come with me this evening up to the trees? It is the last day of the summer, and the valar with gather there to share their peace with one another."

"I am no valar."

"I know it, child, but often the valar bring those dear to them also."

And the cold in him melted a little at this, because he had never heard words so tender from Aulë, and especially not for him. He drew himself up in fearful pride.

"Why not take another?"

"All my maiar are dear to me, Mairon, today I ask you."

Mairon was all at once feverish flustered at this warmth but also bitter that he was still one among the faceless many. A faceless many who worked tirelessly whilst the secrets of ease were kept hidden. He accepted though, because in his heart he yearned even for the appearance of walking as one chosen beside Aulë.

The summer bid its farewell in the ripened fruits of Laurelin and soft white blossoms of Telperion. The light suffused all, seeping even into the grey habit of Námo and the ocean breakers of the seldom seen Ulmo. The hill was bright with the power of the great singers, all of whom Mairon knew only from afar. He was shy in the midst of their aura and afraid of what their knowledge might read in the crevasses of his soul.

He only saw him momentarily, and he only knew him by the smoke of his cloak. It was the smell of ashes and new snow. Something leapt in Mairon that was so thrilled and afraid that he thought of running. He thought of running all the way back to the darkened forge where less is seen and less still noticed.

Instead he broke off and moved smoothly with soft guile. The smell of hot cinders and soft burning mixed with the crack of unsteady ice. It jolted tremors into Mairon's step. He came to where the curve of the hill sped into the shadows of a forest. He could not see into the darkness and feared to step further in.

There suddenly, in the eaves of dying summer, a shape swam before him. It was built of liquid smoke and shadows that already thought of wandering elsewhere. Only its eyes were still. They were as the glaciers he had seen in Arda. He looked into them with all his raw adoration laid out as a carpet upon which to be trodden.

"What is this that comes before me?" The voice was quiet like the oldest of conspiracies.

Mairon could not speak, for the smoke had dried out his throat, and his wonder his senses.

Then the one that was of old called the greatest of the valar turned with disinterest from the sight. Mairon broke apart on seeing that boredom. His thin, fiery form collected itself and proffered its hands to the phantom. His entire body shook as he annunciated his words.

"Take this." The lean of desperation in his body was almost one of supplication. The vala looked back. In the maia's hands was the dull ring.

Mairon closed his eyes tight as the breath of the dark one passed over him and its ethereal hand took the ring from him.

When he opened his eyes, Mairon was alone. He walked back up the hill to stand beside Aulë. He was cold and shivered though, for he could not feel the light of the two trees.


End file.
